More Articles

On the phone with a 911 dispatcher yesterday, Teresa Nelson whispers to her 8-year-old daughter
to get back. Then she tells the dispatcher that her ex-boyfriend is banging at the door. He wants
in.

Justin Douglas Manns had been there the day before, she says, and he had a knife then.

The dispatcher immediately sends deputies to 10146 County Road 195, east of Kenton in Hardin
County, and she tells Nelson not to talk to Manns through the door. She tells her to stay on the
line.

“I am afraid for my life,” Nelson says.

Nearly five minutes into the call, Manns kicks in the door.

As the little girl screams in the background, Nelson clearly is in a fight for her life. Until
the very last second, though, she is protecting her daughter, telling her to get away. Then, Nelson
tells the dispatcher that Manns has her by the hair, that she’s been stabbed. The line goes
dead.

It all happened in seconds, and it couldn’t have been much more horrific, said Hardin County
Sheriff Keith Everhart, whose deputies swarmed the place within minutes. But it was too late.

Nelson was dead, and Manns had fatally stabbed himself, too. Though there had been a history of
drug abuse, the sheriff’s office had no record of violence between the couple at Nelson’s rural
home, about 65 miles northwest of Columbus, or anywhere else.

But Nelson, 28, told the 911 dispatcher that Manns, 22, was angry because she wanted to give him
back his engagement ring.When the dispatcher called back, the girl told her she didn’t know what to
do: “I don’t want my mommy to be dead.”

She was hiding in a bedroom with her grandmother, she said. That man, she said, was still
there.

It’s an excruciating call with the girl crying for her mother and begging for someone to help
her. She asked the dispatcher to call her daddy.

Yet through her frantic sobs, she clearly answered the dispatcher’s questions, offering phone
numbers of relatives and telling what she saw. The dispatcher assured her that help is on the
way.

“ Are they almost here?” she asked. “Will you pick me up?”

The girl begged the dispatcher for someone to come get her.

The dispatcher stayed calm, calling the girl by name and telling her she’s doing everything she
can to keep her safe. Help, she tells the child over and over, is on the way.

The girl asked if, when the police arrive, “Can I go with them?”

The dispatcher seemed to choke up a little at that.The girl was examined by paramedics at the
scene and was physically unhurt, Everhart said.

She was with relatives yesterday.

“Children’s services is helping us see that she gets whatever she needs,” the sheriff said.